Michael Lamson: DENR’s puzzling position

In his Aug. 15 Point of View “Cooper’s puzzling EPA stance,” Donald van der Vaart’s criticism of the Clean Power Plan was itself puzzling.

Without considering how the Environmental Protection Agency plan would benefit our state, the secretary of the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources merely criticized it as just another example of federal overreach, another affront to states’ rights. Seriously?

According to the secretary, the EPA plan would impose air quality standards on North Carolina that the state already intends to meet on its own by 2030, without federal oversight, equating the unfairness to “essentially asking North Carolina to make a Prius more (energy) efficient while neighboring states are driving 1972 Cadillacs.”

It is admirable that North Carolina has significantly reduced its carbon emissions since 2005 and intends to meet the spirit of the EPA plan on its own by 2030.

However, since good example is not always followed, isn’t the point of having national clean air standards to get neighboring states to abandon their “1972 Cadillacs” in favor of more energy-efficient technology, which would also improve the air quality in North Carolina?

This story was originally published August 22, 2015 at 2:00 PM with the headline "Michael Lamson: DENR’s puzzling position."